Thursday 27 August 2009

Fighting words

Lord Turner is talking tough over the banks. It seems that the head of the FSA now thinks that many of their activities are "socially useless". Moreover, he thinks a tax on bonuses might be useful.

It all sounds great to me. From the BBC....

The boss of UK watchdog the Financial Services Authority (FSA) says he would be happy to consider a tax on banks to prevent excessive bonus payments.

FSA chairman Lord Turner also told Prospect magazine that the financial services sector had "grown beyond a socially reasonable size".

The FSA said he was "not setting out any new policy" and the government said taxation was a matter for the Treasury.

Lord Turner said that a tax on financial transactions in the City would cut banks' profits, and thereby reduce the funds available for bonuses.

2 comments:

Marchamont Needham said...

quite right - drive the swines out, with a strong economy like ours we don't need these city wide-boys any more.

Barry said...

Useless at what it was supposed to do the FSA is now hounding the very people who largely funded the spending binge of the past decade. Perhaps someone should whisper in his ear that these folk can go and nothing will stop them. Taking substantial tax revenue with them. What good does that do?